Drawing from the history of writing, french architect & artist Olivier Vadrot has created orchestre, a series of 26 outdoor sculptural seats, each of which with a shape that represents a letter from the latin alphabet.

Designed for the campus of the university of literature and human sciences in aix-en-provence, france, the elements offer a positive space for interaction thanks to their abstract forms: an O becomes a ring around which people can gather, an E turns into a bench for users to sit next to each other, and a U acts as a double stool for more intimate conversations.

Halfway between seats and sculptures, vadrot‘s pieces are created as a reflection upon the power of language and words, referencing the history of writing, which from the rosetta stone to the egyptian hieroglyphs, is engraved in stone.

The project offers a space within the city where people can get together and interact, while the ensemble of all elements is arranged in the form of an imaginary ellipse, in reference to the stage of the antique amphitheaters, known as orchestre in french.

Most of the pieces are made of lava stone (andesite) extracted from the massif central in france, while the smallest pieces are made of marble.